180 The first known public execution of Christians in North Africa took place on July 17, 180, in Scillium (near Kasserine, modern-day Tunisia). The twelve Scillitan Martyrs were all tortured and then beheaded. The executions were ordered by the Roman proconsul of Africa, Vigellius Saturninus. The victims were accused of being Christians and of refusing to worship the Roman gods and plotting to overthrow the Roman government.
1203 Only 12,000 men volunteered for the Fourth Crusade in 1202, so they were diverted by their Venetian financial backers to sack the wealthy city of Constantinople, partly to pay back the loan. Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Crusaders but they carried on and captured Constantinople by assault on July 17. 1204. The Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos fled from his capital into exile. Another Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos liberated the city in 1261,
1399 A 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland on October 16, 1384. Her title either reflected the Polish lords' attempt to hinder her future husband from adopting the same title without further act or only emphasized that she was a queen regnant. She reigned for 15 years until her death on July 17, 1399.
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| Capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 |
1399 A 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland on October 16, 1384. Her title either reflected the Polish lords' attempt to hinder her future husband from adopting the same title without further act or only emphasized that she was a queen regnant. She reigned for 15 years until her death on July 17, 1399.
1597 Anna Utenhoven was an Anabaptist servant in the Spanish Netherlands who was martyred for her faith. She was buried alive at Vilvoorde on July 17, 1597. During the burial, Anna was given repeated chances to recant her faith, convert to Catholicism and be freed, but she refused each time. She was the last person executed for heresy in the Low Countries.
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| Jan Luyken's drawing of Utenhoven being buried alive |
1674 The father of English hymnody Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England on July 17, 1674. He was brought up in a home of committed Christians; his father, also Isaac Watts, was a respected nonconformist who had twice been imprisoned for his religious beliefs. His mother was of Huguenot origin. Watts is credited with some 750 hymns, as well as many books. His joyful hymns expressed wonder, praise and adoration covering the whole range of Christian experience.
1717 Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements composed by George Frideric Handel for a July 17, 1717 boating party for King George I on the River Thames. The work was performed by 50 musicians playing close to the royal barge from which the George I listened with some close friends. The king was said to have loved Handel's Water Music so much that he ordered the exhausted musicians to play the suites twice more, before and after supper.
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| Handel (left) and King George I on the Thames River, 17 July 1717. by Edouard Hamman |
1762 Six months after Catherine the Great's husband, Grand Duke Peter, succeeded to the Russian throne in 1762, becoming Peter III, he was removed in a coup. He was assassinated eight days later. Catherine, although not descended from any previous Russian emperor, succeeded her husband as Catherine II on July 17, 1762. The coup was popular among the masses as the ex Czar was greatly hated. The cheering soldiers called her "little mother."
1763 Businessman and philanthropist John Jacob Astor was born on July 17, 1763 in Germany. Astor moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. He entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast, becoming America's first multi-millionaire. He got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate.
1790 Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith never married. He spent his last years living with his mother and after she passed away his cousin Miss Jane Douglas at Panmure House, Cannongate, Edinburgh. Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House after a painful illness on July 17, 1790. On his death bed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more. His last words were "I believe we must adjourn the meeting to some other place."
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| Smith's burial place in Canongate, Kirkyard |
1793 After Charlotte Corday was executed by guillotine on July 17, 1793, a man named Legros lifted her head and slapped it on the cheeks. An expression of "unequivocal indignation" then appeared on Corday's face suggesting that victims of the guillotine may retain consciousness for a short while.
1850 William Cranch Bond and John Adams Whipple took the first astrophotograph of a star other than the Sun on July 17, 1850. The star they photographed was Vega, a bright star in the constellation Lyra. The photograph was taken using a daguerreotype, a type of early photographic process.
1887 American activist on behalf of the mentally ill, Dorothea Dix moved into the New Jersey State Hospital, Morris Plains at the age of 79. The state legislature had designated a suite for her private use as long as she lived. Although an invalid, she carried on correspondence with people from England, Japan, and elsewhere. Dix died aged 85 on July 17, 1887 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1894 The Belgian Roman Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre was born on July 17, 1894. He formulated the Big Bang theory in 1927. Lemaitre was also the first to present the idea of an expanding universe, derived from General Relativity and later known as Hubble's law.
1917 On July 17, 1917 King George V issued a proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family would bear the surname Windsor. The king was of German paternal descent and the name was changed from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor in 1917 because of anti-German sentiment in the British Empire during World War.
1918 In October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power from Kerensky's Provisional Government after which there was increased talk of putting the already abdicated Emperor Nicholas II of Russia on trial. Nicholas and his family were imprisoned in the two-story Ipatiev House in the town of Yekaterinburg. In the early hours of July 17, 1918 they were executed there by a firing squad along with their doctor and three servants.
1941 Joe DiMaggio holds the Major League Baseball record of hitting safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941. On July 17, 1941 at Cleveland Stadium, DiMaggio's streak was finally snapped at 56 games, thanks in part to two backhand stops by Indians third baseman Ken Keltner. The day after his 56 game hitting streak ended, DiMaggio embarked on a second streak that lasted 16 games. Had he hit in game #57, he would have had a 73 game hitting streak.
1948 The first hijack of a commercial plane in Asia took place on July 17, 1948 when a Cathay Pacific flying boat, Miss Macao, was seized by Chinese bandits. The plane was en route from Macau to Hong Kong when it was intercepted by a group of armed men. The bandits forced the plane to land in a remote area of the Zhujiang River estuary, where they robbed the passengers and crew and then escaped.
1954 Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954 in Hamburg, Germany to German Protestant theologian Horst Kasner and Herlind Jentzsch, a teacher of English and Latin. In the same year that Angela was born, her father received a pastorate at the Lutheran church in Quitzow (a quarter of Perleberg in Brandenburg, East Germany,) so she grew up in the German Democratic Republic.
1887 American activist on behalf of the mentally ill, Dorothea Dix moved into the New Jersey State Hospital, Morris Plains at the age of 79. The state legislature had designated a suite for her private use as long as she lived. Although an invalid, she carried on correspondence with people from England, Japan, and elsewhere. Dix died aged 85 on July 17, 1887 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1894 The Belgian Roman Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre was born on July 17, 1894. He formulated the Big Bang theory in 1927. Lemaitre was also the first to present the idea of an expanding universe, derived from General Relativity and later known as Hubble's law.
1917 On July 17, 1917 King George V issued a proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family would bear the surname Windsor. The king was of German paternal descent and the name was changed from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor in 1917 because of anti-German sentiment in the British Empire during World War.
1918 In October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power from Kerensky's Provisional Government after which there was increased talk of putting the already abdicated Emperor Nicholas II of Russia on trial. Nicholas and his family were imprisoned in the two-story Ipatiev House in the town of Yekaterinburg. In the early hours of July 17, 1918 they were executed there by a firing squad along with their doctor and three servants.
1941 Joe DiMaggio holds the Major League Baseball record of hitting safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941. On July 17, 1941 at Cleveland Stadium, DiMaggio's streak was finally snapped at 56 games, thanks in part to two backhand stops by Indians third baseman Ken Keltner. The day after his 56 game hitting streak ended, DiMaggio embarked on a second streak that lasted 16 games. Had he hit in game #57, he would have had a 73 game hitting streak.
1948 The first hijack of a commercial plane in Asia took place on July 17, 1948 when a Cathay Pacific flying boat, Miss Macao, was seized by Chinese bandits. The plane was en route from Macau to Hong Kong when it was intercepted by a group of armed men. The bandits forced the plane to land in a remote area of the Zhujiang River estuary, where they robbed the passengers and crew and then escaped.
1954 Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954 in Hamburg, Germany to German Protestant theologian Horst Kasner and Herlind Jentzsch, a teacher of English and Latin. In the same year that Angela was born, her father received a pastorate at the Lutheran church in Quitzow (a quarter of Perleberg in Brandenburg, East Germany,) so she grew up in the German Democratic Republic.
1944 Napalm incendiary bombs were dropped on July 17, 1944 for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France. The flammable liquid napalm was developed in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University, by a team led by chemist Louis Fieser.
1955 Walt Disney opened his Disneyland theme park on July 17, 1955. He got his idea and inspiration when he visited the "Tivoli"-park in Denmark. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California. In 1955, the admission for an adult ticket to Disneyland cost $1, which was then only double the price of a movie ticket. Disneyland had 18 attractions on its opening day.
1955 Arco, Idaho became the first town powered entirely by nuclear power energy when a 3,500-watt experimental power plant went on line for an hour on July 17, 1955. The town's power plant, the Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I), was a small experimental reactor that was designed to produce electricity. The EBR-I was located at the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), which is now known as the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
1965 As a young man James Brown wanted to play professional baseball or be a professional boxer. He was imprisoned for petty theft in 1949 after breaking into a car, and paroled three years later.
His first group was The Flames, and he was the drummer. Brown sang some lead vocals with other members and quickly became their frontman. James Brown's first top 10 hit, "Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag," was released on July 17, 1965.
1969 In 1920, The New York Times ridiculed rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard and claimed that rockets could not function in space. On July 17, 1969, a day after the Apollo 11 launch, the newspaper formally acknowledged their error.
1990 Aerospace engineer, Edward A. Murphy Jr, who worked on safety-critical systems, died on July 17, 1990. Murphy's law, an adage about accidents that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong," is named after him. It is a misinterpretation of his statement "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he [his assistant] will do it that way."
2014 World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17th each year. The brainchild of the founder of Emojipedia, Jeremy Burge, he created the day in 2014 with the purpose of promoting the use of emojis. The date originates from the calendar emoji of the Apple Color Emoji typeface, which shows July 17.
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